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3 Ways to Help Your Employees Share the Mission

By Ben Bartlingon
Apr 25, 2016

Most great and successful companies have a mission. It's part of the vision that keeps everyone working toward the same goal. But a common struggle with company missions is getting employees to share in the same passion for the mission.

Employees who buy in to the mission of your company are much more effective. When they understand the mission and work by its requirements then the company will be better and ultimately that is good for you and for the employees.

Here are three workplace tips to get even the lowest level employees engaged in the big picture.

Visualize It For Them

There are many fantastic staff management tips about explaining the "why" of the company's mission, its values, its purpose; however, it's not enough to tell your staff the big picture.

You have to teach it, and review it often. Human brains have a lot of information to process, and the business of everyday life can often overwhelm the ability to stay focused on the big picture. So take a page from your school days, and map it. Graph it. Draw it. You might order a simple poster with your mission on it, keyed next to representative images, or perhaps you get a little elaborate and have an artist help you capture it.

Incentivize It For Them

Many managers feels that incentive or rewards programs are juvenile, or insult the maturity of the employees.

However, the research data is overwhelming on this point: people respond to incentives. In fact, the data on this is so conclusive that even online universities, with their largely adult student populations, are starting to use badges, small status rewards, and other incentives to enhance retention.

The big secret here? You don't have to give away things that have monetary value. From preferences in employee scheduling and shift choices, to favored parking spots, there are many small perks that make people's lives easier, and make their personal preferences seem important to their employer.

Analyze It For Them

There is a lot of debate in business on whether to lead with "stories" or with "numbers".

When counseling employees who are having difficulty, or just not performing up to their potential, consider doing both: find the story in their numbers.

For instance, in restaurant management, map their service performance over the day, or across days of the week. Show them in macro terms their own performance story. People like to hear about themselves, and data tools today allow managers to access this information. You can even contrast their performance to the average of other staff, or the top band of performers.

Conclusion

If you take the time to invest upfront in some big projects - graphic-based mission statements, fair and fun incentive programs, performance tracking - you will find that motivation and good performance is something you have to maintain, not constantly recreate and re-energize.Do yourself and your bottom line a favor and give these three approaches a try!